From its early acquisition of a copy of Photoshop software for the
permanent collection to its ongoing support of innovative
Net-based artist projects, the California Museum of Photography
web site is on the Internet's front line of visual culture and
should be a frequent stop. Don't forget to check out the
Virtual Magnifying Glass.

Collected
Visions is a fascinating project directed by Lorrie Novak, who attempts
to create a web site with significant input
from its users. "Drawing upon snapshots collected from over 300
people, Collected Visions examines how family photographs shape our
memories." Visitors can submit their own family snapshots to
the archive or use the existing images to create their own essay.
Only some submissions are selected for posting in a public gallery,
which raises questions about the differences between curating
and sharing. Most of the essays we viewed were a single image with
a brief comment. One, perhaps unintentional, effect
of this site is to emphasize the difference between
Novak's
own movies "Three Jellyfish" and "My Favorite
Snapshot"and the general public's contributions. Nevertheless,
these family pix with their prosaic commentaries do hold a powerful
interest.

The Daguerrean
Society web site is an amateur productionin the original and best
sense of the word. The site is engaging, well-designed, and informed by a
knowledgeable and passionate point of view. Period illustrations
are complemented by numerous historical texts. Also rewarding are
the personal points of view by many daguerrotype owners. There are
also numerous links to other resources on the Net, including NMAA's
own daguerreotype site, Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype.

George
Eastman House cares for the George Eastman legacy collections. It also collects
and interprets images, films, literature, and equipment in the
disciplines of photography and motion pictures. They provide a web site full
of photography and film information, including digital access
to collections and exhibitions, making it a great historical photography research
center.

The
International Center of Photography celebrates photography's diverse
rolesas an agent of social change, a medium of aesthetic expression,
a tool for scientific or historical research, and a repository for personal
experience and memory. Like the changing photographic medium itself, ICP's
mission is expanding to encompass the new electronic imaging media.
ICP's web site offers virtual exhibitions as well as information on collections
and classes at ICP.

The
National Digital Library Program digitizes and delivers electronically
the distinctive, historical Americana holdings at the Library
of Congress. The American Memory Historical Collections,
a major component of the Library's National Digital Library Program, are
multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound,
moving pictures, and text from the Library's Americana collections. There
are currently more than seventy collections in the American Memory archives.

Magnum, founded in 1947, is a cooperative of nearly sixty photographers.
Gaining membership requires an rigorous internal nomination process.
Magnum Photos' offices in London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo, can
be contacted directly through the web site. Each office handles
editorial assignments, archival research, advertising
and annual report work, as well as portfolio and print sales.

Magnum
photographers have worked for nearly every major publication in the
world over the past half century, with many journalistic scoops to their
credit. The photographers are particularly well known for their photo
essaysincluding classic reportage by founders Robert Capa and
Henri Cartier-Bresson and seminal photo essays such as "Vietnam Inc."
by Philip Jones Griffiths in the 1960s, and Josef Koudelka's
"Gypsies" in the 1970s. Today Magnum continues to produce
the very best in documentary photography.

The work
of Gilles Peressin Iran, Bosnia, and Northern Irelandis among the
most committed photography being produced today. Picture Projects,
dedicated to "documentary photography from our world," is curated by three
students at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. They do a remarkable
job of presenting Peress's photographs of Bosnia in as unsettling a manner
as his graphically powerful books with their thin line of provocative
narrative. While the presentation can on occassion seem to overpower the
pictures, this is not unintentional. There is a constant tension between
the image and the word in Peress's work. In this presentation, Picture
Projects makes visitors feel as if they are in a
hypertextual world, yet by and large force them down a single
path through the image/text narrative.

Rhizome.org
is a nonprofit organization that presents new media art to the public,
fosters communication and critical dialogue about new media art, and preserves
new media art for the future.

The
Rhizome.org community includes artists, curators, writers,
designers, programmers, students, educators, and new
media professionals. The geographically dispersed community
spans seventy-five countries and five continents.
The best way to participate in this community is by subscribing to one
of their free email lists.

Sight
is an online photography "magazine" founded by two University of Missouri
School of Journalism graduates. It does not have the pedigree of its print
brethren such as Aperture, or See, but it is a thoughtful example that hints
at the competitive potential of a self-published upNetstart.
Sight includes portfolios by several of our favorite photographers,
including two series by Paul
Kwilecki.

Third
View, organized and produced by Mark Klett in conjunction with a collaborative
team, makes rephotographs of historic American Western landscapes, creates
new photographs, keeps a field diary of its travels, and records video
and sound to reinterpret Western scenes.

Based
on the Rephotographic Survey Project (RSP), an earlier collaborative project
that revisited and rephotographed these nineteenth-century photographs
during the late 1970s, the Third View project repeats the first
two images and creates a third in the series. Third View is
concerned with physical changes to the land, but also with changes in
cultural perception. Human interventions, personal histories linked to
historic sites, and the examination of western icons are central
project goals. The project also addresses the nature of
photographic surveys and the documents they create.

Do you still
remember the magic of hyperlinking to an image on the Web? Or hearing
audio in real time? Or chatting online? These capabilities seem trivial
now but at first they were like magic. The QuicktimeVR on the zoecom
site is not just another pan around a room. They practice truth-in-advertising
when they say: "You must experience zoetropes. These marvels of optical
illusion are sure to bring a moment of enjoyment into your life."

A zoetrope is an early form of the movie, which used a rotating cylinder
with slits through which to view sequential still photographs. As the
images "strobe" by the viewer's eyesight, they appear to be
moving. In these QTVR clips, click on the image and hold the mouse down.
As you move it closer or further from the center of the image, it spins
more or less quickly. With a little patience, you can get it to "revolve"
at just the right speed so that is appears to be a regular movie loopor
you can make the wagon wheels turn in reverse, just like in the movies.